Unborn

The unseen force that held me hostage moved me through the air at incredible speed. His attempt to pull me from the depths and eject me as quickly as possible was nearly accomplished, though the reasons behind his mission remained completely inexplicable. I had five months left before I was to leave—why had he come for me? Even more baffling was why he had come at all. The transition was never supposed to happen that way.

I knew the Dark Ones were fearsome creatures, capable of traveling between worlds, but, in all my centuries, I’d never seen one. The Fallen, Father called them, warning me of their merciless nature. For that reason, he’d kept me well-hidden from them—at least until that day. Even Father had been powerless to stop the one who ripped me from his protective hold. “I feared this day would come,” he yelled as his grasp on my arm gave way to the strength of the one sent to take me. “Take her where he won’t find her. You owe me that much!”

Those were the last words I heard before the sound of the Dark One’s wings drowned his wails completely.

I will miss him, I thought. He loved me so.

Water from the Acheron boiled and spit, stinging my face as we crossed it. I knew it wouldn’t be long before the familiar light of the world would start to permeate the darkened tunnel we were rocketing through. I’d never seen spring before; that was never part of the deal. The favored one spent the fertile seasons on Earth, and I the seasons of death and darkness. I wondered why I did not pass her on the journey—it was the only time I ever saw her.

When the Dark One broke through to the world above, my hopes were smashed. The eternal cold of my existence was not to be broken; spring was not awaiting my arrival. Instead, the bitterness of a lingering winter surrounded and engulfed me, magnified further by our blistering rate of ascent. As the air thinned around me and the chill burrowed deeper, the irony that I was always cold struck me. I never understood how a person could be so perpetually frozen, even when surrounded by fire and flame. Father wondered if it was because I did not belong in the Underworld—that my soul repelled the warmth that the torment of the damned provided.

When I snapped my attention back from my wandering thoughts, I saw that I wasn’t being taken to meet my mother at all. I would normally have been entrusted to her care upon entering the earthly realm, delivered to where she always stood waiting, but never with open arms. Instead, I was being flown far and fast in the opposite direction, and, as my body shook and my breathing failed me, a faint sense of calm overtook me. Wherever I was headed, whatever fate I was destined for, I reveled in the knowledge that I’d finally be rid of her.

And that was a fate worth dying for.